He didn't love her, but he'd loved taking care of her. Loved buying her little presents, loved the idea of her.
Losing her had been bad; losing his daughter was much, much worse. Jesse trailed noise and cheer everywhere she went - and her absence was . . . difficult. His wolf was restless. A creature of the moment, his wolf. There was no way to comfort it with the knowledge that he'd have Jesse back for the summer. Not that he derived much comfort from that either. So he tried to lose himself in work.
Someone knocked on the back door.
He pushed back the chair and had to pause. The wolf was angry that someone had breached his sanctuary. Not even his pack had been brave enough these past few days to approach him in his home.
By the time he stalked into the kitchen, he had it mostly under control. He jerked open the back door and expected to see one of his wolves. But it was Mercy.
She didn't look cheerful - but then, she seldom did when she had to come over and talk to him. She was tough and independent and not at all happy to have him interfere in any way with that independence. It had been a long time since someone had bossed him around the way she did - and he liked it. More than a wolf who'd been Alpha for twenty years ought to like it.
She smelled of burnt car oil, jasmine from the shampoo she'd been using that month, and chocolate. Or maybe that last was the cookies on the plate she handed him.
"Here," she said stiffly. And he realized it was shyness that pinched in the corner of her mouth. "Chocolate usually helps me regain my balance when life kicks me in the teeth."
She didn't wait for him to say anything, just turned around and walked back to her house.
He took the cookies back to the office with him. After a few minutes, he ate one. Chocolate, thick and dark, spread across his tongue, its bitterness alleviated by a sinful amount of brown sugar and vanilla. He'd forgotten to eat and hadn't realized it.
But it wasn't the chocolate or the food that made him feel better. It was Mercy's kindness to someone she viewed as her enemy. And right at that moment, he realized something. She would never love him for what he could do for her.
He ate another cookie before getting up to make himself dinner.
* * *
ADAM SHUT DOWN THE BOND BETWEEN US UNTIL IT was nothing more than a gossamer thread.
"I'm sorry," he murmured against my ear. "So sorry. F - " He swallowed the obscenity before it left his lips. He pulled me closer, and I realized we were both sitting in the gravel driveway, huddled next to the truck. And the gravel was really cold on my bare skin.
"Are you all right?" he said.
"Do you know what you showed me?" I asked. My voice was hoarse.
"I thought it was a flashback," he answered. He'd seen me have them before.
"Not one of mine," I told him. "One of yours."
He stilled. "Was it bad?"
He'd been in Vietnam; he'd been a werewolf since before I was born - he'd probably seen a lot of bad stuff.
"It seemed like a private moment that I had no business seeing," I told him truthfully. "But it wasn't bad."
I'd seen him the moment that I'd become something more than an assignment from the Marrok.
I remembered feeling stupid standing on his back porch with a plate of cookies for a man whose life had just gone down in the flames of a nasty divorce. He hadn't said anything when he answered the door - so I'd assumed that he'd thought it stupid, too. I'd gone back home as fast as I could without running.
I had had no idea that it had helped. Nor that he saw me as tough and capable. Funny, I'd always thought I looked weak to the werewolves.
So what if I still flinched if he forgot and put a hand on my shoulder? Time would fix that. I was already a lot better: daily flashbacks to the rape were a thing of the past. We'd work through it. Adam was willing to make allowances for me.
And our bond did its rubber-band thing, which it did sometimes, and snapped back into place, giving him access to my thoughts as if my head were clear as glass.
"Whatever you need," he said, his body suddenly still as the evening air. "Whatever I can do."
I relaxed my shoulders, burying my nose against his collarbone, and after a second, the relaxation was genuine. "I love you," I told him. "And we need to talk about me paying you for that truck."
"I'm not - "
I cut off his words. I meant to put a finger against his lips or something tender like that. But I'd jerked my head up in reaction to his apology and slammed my forehead into his chin. Shutting him up much more effectively than I'd meant to as he bit his tongue.
He laughed as he bled down his shirt, and I babbled apologies. He let his head fall back against the truck door with a thump.
"Leave off, Mercy. It'll close up quick enough on its own."
I backed up until I was sitting beside him - half-laughing myself, because although it probably hurt quite a bit, he was right that his injury would heal in a few minutes. It was minor, and he was a werewolf.
"You'll quit trying to pay for the SUV," he told me.
"The SUV was my fault," I informed him.
"You didn't throw a wall on it," he said. "I might have let you pay for the dent - "
"Don't even try to lie to me," I huffed indignantly, and he laughed again.
"Fine. I wouldn't have. But it's a moot point anyway, because after the wall fell on it, fixing the dent was out of the question. And the ice elf's lack of control was completely the vampire's fault - "
I could have kept arguing with him - I usually like arguing with Adam. But there were things I liked better.
I leaned forward and kissed him.
He tasted of blood and Adam - and he didn't seem to have any trouble following the switch from mild bickering to passion. After a while - I don't know how long - Adam looked down at his bloodstained shirt and started laughing again. "I suppose we might as well go bowling after all," he said, pulling me to my feet.
Chapter 2
WE STOPPED AT A STEAK HOUSE FOR DINNER FIRST.
He'd left the bloodstained coat and formal shirt in the car and snagged a dark blue T-shirt from a bag of miscellaneous clothes in the backseat. He'd asked me if he looked odd wearing a T-shirt with tuxedo pants. He couldn't see the way the shirt clung to the muscles of his shoulders and back. I reassured him, truthfully - and with a straight face - that no one would care.
It was Friday night, and business was brisk. Happily, the service was fast.
After the waitress took our orders, Adam said, a little too casually, "So what did you see in your vision?"
"Nothing embarrassing," I told him. "Just one time when I brought cookies over to you."